Men For Change - Media Coverage:

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TRIBUNE

Monday, October 13, 1997

Students give peace a chance

Pilot program offers path out of violence

By Diane brown
STAFF WRITER

COVINA - The high school students in Avinderjat Bindra's classes in Eggleston Community Education Center are no strangers to violence.

"My father once kicked me down a flight of stairs," one student, alias Jeremy, said Thursday as Bindra took a quick survey on how violence had personally touched the lives of 13 students in one class.

"A gun was once put to my head," another student said, adding that the gunman was a cousin who belonged to a rival gang.

Their teacher and officials of the community school, run by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, hope a violence-prevention curriculum being tested at the school proves an effective weapon for peacemaking.

The Covina school is one of 11 county educational facilities using the "Healthy Relationships: A Violence-Prevention Curriculum" in the three-month pilot program.

About 130 students at two juvenile halls, one shelter for abused children and seven other community schools are using the curriculum. It focuses on why people become aggressive and how negative emotions and misconceptions about the opposite sex can cause violent behavior.

About 85 percent of the students involved in the program are young men, officials said.

"Healthy Relationships" student-centered lessons include classroom discussions, take-home assignments and classroom self-evaluation projects.

"What we are trying to do is actually change their attitude and behavior rather than providing them with knowledge and hoping they will change," said John Whiting of the county Office of Education.

"We know it's not going to happen overnight, but hopefully they will look at violence from the perspective of the victim as opposed to a perpetrator."

Teachers will test students before and after each lesson. They will also do case studies with students to assess changes in attitude and behavior, Whiting said.

Although the project doesn't officially start until Oct. 20, Bindra has tried a few of the assignments, including Thursday's lesson on "The Nuts and Bolts of Aggression."

"I feel it is making a small difference. These kids are now becoming aware of what's happening and understanding what is at the base of emotions," the teacher said.

Many of his students are victims of violence, and if they become aware of their own anger and its causes, they can appropriately control their emotions without becoming perpetrators themselves, he said.

For Jeremy - whose real name cannot be used because he is a ward of the county - the class has helped him realize he doesn't have to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both of whom he said were abusive.

"Thank you. Be quiet, you're confusing me," Jeremy, 17, said politely but assertively to a classmate as Bindra's class discussed whether certain actions were examples of physical, mental or emotional abuse.

"Before I wouldn't have taken it like I did today," Jeremy said later, adding that he would have either cursed his classmate or thrown something at him. "I always thought it (violence) was hereditary... (now) I know that I can change."

The "Healthy Relationships" curriculum was developed in Canada by three members of Men For Change, a group that works toward promoting gender equality and ending violence in society, officials said.

Designed to deal with the roots of violence, rather than the symptoms, it was introduced in 1994 to educators working with a partner school board in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Pilot materials cost $750, Whiting said.

A second pilot program is scheduled to begin early next year with a different set of teachers and students, the county teacher said.

"The adolescent male doesn't have a lot of respect for the adolescent female," Whiting said.

The program is being used with 1000 students, grades seven through nine, who are in a three-year study being carried out by the Manitoba Research Centre on Family Violence and Violence Against Women.

If the program proves successful locally, it will be used in all county juvenile camps and community education centers, Whiting said.

Another Eggleston student, Tazagain an aliassaid he learned from his teacher's exhortations during the first lessons in the pilot program.

"Before getting angry, I think about what could happenI could get killed or someone could get killed by me," Taz, 16, said.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1997

(excerpt) The story behind the Harry-Parker reunion

David Swick

When Andrew Safer and Peter Davison were in Los Angeles recently, they got together with former Prime Minister Kim Campbell. The leaders of Halifax-based Men For Change say everything went peachy. "She volunteered to host an information session next time we're in L.A.," Safer said. "And she'll be there and preside. She said a meeting at (the Canadian consulate) would give the presentation a certain cache it wouldn't get in a hotel room." Safer and Davison were in L.A. to talk to educators about the Men For Change school curriculum. While in town, they took in a little local nightlife, witnessing an armed robbery in a Mexican food takeout.